Clock ticks for Madagascar's lemurs

Clock ticks for Madagascar's lemurs

Immortalised in the hit cartoon "Madagascar", real-life lemurs face extinction within 20 years short of drastic action to tackle the poverty driving islanders to poach the primates and destroy their habitat.

Each year that passes hastens the decline of the saucer-eyed primates, as the Indian Ocean island's people struggle for survival amid a drawn-out political crisis.

(excerpt)
Madagascar is home to 105 different species of lemur, accounting for 20 percent of the world's species of primate, in an area spanning less than one percent of the global habitat of all primates.

But crop burnings and wild fires destroy 200,000 hectares of Madagascar's forest a year. And the 13 percent of its natural forest that remains may disappear within a generation, according to Ratsimbazafy....

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